Vegan Lent

posted by Mike on February 27th, 2006

Most Catholics in the US give up eating bird and mammal meat on Fridays during Lent. Since I became vegan five years ago, my friends and co-workers have teased me: “You’re not giving up anything! Maybe you should eat meat on Fridays!”

Adam Villani suggests that I give up soy on Fridays during Lent, and I’m going to take his advice. For a vegan, that’s giving up an especially satisfying part of the diet.

This year I was surprised to receive a birthday cake that was both vegan and decorated with Gamera. Cake: The Bean Counter, Worcester. Photo: Claire Schaeffer-Duffy.

Hi Mike – I am wondering what you will be eating within your very limited food-space. Are you taking a diet journal, chronicling your every meal? (I am guessing lots of lentils and wheat-gluten, but meat-eating stifles my creativity.)

Part of my vegan odyssey has been realizing that the vegan food-space isn’t very limited; at least, it doesn’t feel limited.

I’ve found that I get real spiritual and penitential value from fasting if I skip food altogether, so most Fridays in Lent I’ll be juice-fasting and skipping caffeine as much as possible. My day job requires a great deal of concentration, so if the fasting turns out to be too extreme I’ll rachet it back.

If the juice fasting works out, skipping the soy will be incidental.

I haven’t yet compared Lent plans with my housemate Scott, who in years past has turned Lent into a competition. So my disciplines may change.

Today at the Mansfield College chapel service, we had the lessons Isaiah 58.1–12 and Matthew 6.1–6 and 16–21; read them. Dr Elaine Kaye preached on Richard Baxter whom I thought was the lower churches’ answer to Thomas More. And we sang his hymn They lack not friends who have thy love: “As for my friends, they are not lost; / the several vessels of thy fleet, / though parted now, by tempest tossed, / shall safely in the haven meet.”

hey, neat — i was directed here by querying “vegan for lent”. (a week or so into this lenten season, i noticed that my fasting diet has become vegan, wanted to see if other episcopalians are doing the same thing.)